Features

‘G’ for Griselda! This highly original ‘cooking’ Royal Enfield 350cc single carried its first owner to and from work for 20 years and nearly 80,000 miles. Words: Steve Wilson Photographs: Gary Chapman This magnificently patinated 1949 350cc Royal Enfield Model G was the latest project for retired garage owner Alex Taylor. “And the original owner never…

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Riding high Win on Sunday, sell on Monday… or… ‘success breeds sales’, which is just as well because BSA was doing some winning in the 1960s. Words: Tim Britton Photographs: Fiona Watson Remember the television in the 1960s? The actual device, rather than what it was showing? Yes, it was a masterpiece of the cabinet…

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Multi choice By the early 1920s, when this example was made, the Rudge Multi was something of an anachronism, rather than the trendsetter it had been. Words: Roy Poynting Photographs: Terry Joslin Every era has its iconic, defining, motorcycle – its Fireblade, Bonneville, Brough Superior or whatever – and for a few years around the…

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The rebuild is only half the job in a restoration; fettling and getting it right is the next stage, as the experience with this Slimline Dominator proved. Words: Tim Britton Photographs: Gary Chapman It is reasonable to assume the supply of unrestored British motorcycles must be running down. After all, restoration has been going on…

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Rob Taylor’s magnificently distressed 1948 BSA M33 is his winter bike. Retired garage owner Rob, a cheerful guy and a skilled mechanic, has several interesting classics, including a smart Silk 700 and a near-unique Silk 500cc racer. But the ohv 500cc M33 with its irreproachable patina is a standout. He acquired the BSA, complete with…

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  Although beaten to the honour of creating America’s first four-cylinder motorcycle by the Pierce Four introduced in 1909, when Scottish-born brothers William G and Thomas W Henderson founded the Henderson Motorcycle Co. in Detroit, Michigan in 1911, their aim was to manufacture a luxurious, reliable four-cylinder machine that was substantially better than anything else…

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  It is a fact of life motorcycles deteriorate when stored, it doesn’t matter how good the storage facility is, the environment will have an effect on the various surfaces. Aluminium will dull, paintwork likewise, tyres deflate, grips perish and so on. If you don’t believe me, just ask any museum curator, from the National…

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Nestling by the river which gives the town its name, Bradford-on-Avon is perhaps not the kind of place you would expect to find a motorcycle factory, but it was here in the 1960s one of the UK’s best but now largely forgotten twins, the Royal Enfield Interceptor, was manufactured. Our test bike is a Mark…

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BSA came out fighting as the war ended in 1945, announcing in August a thoroughly modern 350cc ohv single. The B31 derived from the former wartime prototype WD B30, but from the start it wore Small Heath’s new telescopic forks, designed by Val Page and BSA’s Herbert Perkins, to be produced on redundant gun-making machinery.…

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Positively luxurious, the 1909 Pierce was the first four-cylinder motorcycle manufactured in the USA for customer sale. With its massive tubular steel frame, it also stood out for the smoothness of its four-cylinder engine, leading to it being dubbed the ‘Vibrationless Motorcycle’. As a Pierce advert declared: “Pierce motorcycles are not made to compete in…

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